Written by Jared Dubin at CBSSports.com
Stop us if you’ve heard this before: the New England Patriots are headed back to the Super Bowl.
With a 36-15 dismantling of the Pittsburgh Steelers in Sunday’s AFC title game, the Pats won their record ninth AFC championship and in two weeks New England will become the first franchise ever to appear in their ninth Super Bowl. This was the 11th AFC title game of both Bill Belichick’s and Tom Brady’s careers, and that duo is now 7-4 in those contests — and 2-0 against Pittsburgh, the team they also beat to head to their third Super Bowl back in 2005.
Brady himself was simply masterful, spreading the ball around to nine different receivers in one of the most efficient performances of his playoff career. He finished the evening 32 of 42 for 384 yards and three touchdowns, good for a 127.5 passer rating — the fourth-best of his storied postseason career. The 384 yards were a playoff career-high and he also moved into a tie with his childhood hero, Joe Montana, by throwing three-plus touchdowns in a postseason game for the ninth time in his career.
Brady wasn’t alone in his dominance. The New England defense — the much-maligned defense that had nevertheless finished the regular season No. 1 in points allowed — had Pittsburgh’s offense in a stranglehold pretty much right from the jump. The Steelers averaged south of five yards per play for most of the game, only nudging over that mark once things had gotten out of hand.Le’Veon Bell’s injury (more on that later) contributed to the subpar performance, but the Patriot defense was already balling when Bell went down.
Alan Branch, Malcom Brown, Jabaal Sheard, and Rob Ninkovich dominated up front, and by the end of the night, the Steelers had been held to just 2.7 yards per carry (six carries, 20 yards for Bell; 14 carries, 34 yards for injury replacement DeAngelo Williams). Malcolm Butler, Logan Ryan, Eric Rowe,Patrick Chung, and Devin McCourty were flying all over the field, and they combined to hold Big Ben to just 6.7 yards per pass.
Roethlisberger could not find a rhythm with Antonio Brown, who was shadowed by Butler for most of the game (but not all; he was double-teamed on many of the snaps where Butler didn’t follow him). They connected on seven of nine passes for 77 yards, but he was held in check for the most part until the game was already decided. Eli Rogers and Jesse James put forth admirable performances, but drops from Sammie Coates (dropped a deep ball on Pittsburgh’s opening drive and forced a punt) and Cobi Hamilton(dropped a touchdown) took potential points off the board. Garbage time proved kind to the overall numbers, but the Pittsburgh passing game was truly out of sync for much of the evening.
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